Mesut Ozil has missed Arsenal’s last four matches and may be absent again when the Gunners host Huddersfield Town on Saturday.

The 30-year-old playmaker is being treated for a back problem and manager Unai Emery has hinted that he could be passed fit on Friday if he comes through sessions with the club’s physiotherapist unscathed.

The German had been on the training ground on Thursday “running and touching the ball”, Emery told a press conference.

But even if Ozil is given the green light to return there are no guarantees that Emery will pick the club’s highest earner, even for the bench.

That despite being a World Cup winner in 2014, and a player with skills few others on the planet can reproduce, especially when it comes to setting up colleagues to score.

Emery, it seems, had already decided he could do without the former Germany international in his comprehensive overhaul of a squad that had forgotten how to win trophies under previous manager Arsene Wenger.

It was the Frenchman who had sanctioned a salary-doubling, £350 000-a-week, three-year contract extension for Ozil just three months before stepping down as manager.

An Indian court has sentenced a former politician to life in prison for inciting anti-Sikh violence in riots after the 1984 assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi which claimed thousands of lives.

More than 300 women have accused Brazilian faith healer João Teixeira de Faria of sexually abusing them, according to Brazil's state media agency, citing the Department of Public Ministry of the state of Goiás.